


Love and the Art of Knowing Better

by codenamecynic



Series: Shadows Down the Garden Path [2]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Chair Sex, Consent Issues, Elf/Human Relationship(s), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Sexual Content, Heart-to-Heart, M/M, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-18 19:11:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19340836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codenamecynic/pseuds/codenamecynic
Summary: Accidentally embroiled in the affairs of deities, the party takes a brief respite in Silverymoon to recover and Harper finds himself once again on Vigo's doorstep.





	Love and the Art of Knowing Better

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bettydice (BettyKnight)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BettyKnight/gifts), [Fionavar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fionavar/gifts), [Dakoyone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dakoyone/gifts), [vhaerauning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vhaerauning/gifts).



“There?”

“Almost, that’s - _oh_. Oh _fuck.”_

He catches half a glimpse of Vigo’s satisfied expression before his head goes back of its own volition, carried by the arch in his spine. Whatever Vigo is doing, whatever way his long, clever fingers press and twist inside him, makes Taliesin’s entire body curl, from his toes to the tongue in his mouth.

It’s too much, like anything that feels good always is, warm stone under his naked back, the heat of Vigo’s hips between his thighs. He shuts his eyes against it but the light is too bright to ignore, the blaze in his body moving from match-strike to wildfire on the strength of two strumming fingers and a twisting wrist alone.

He can barely hear Vigo’s lowly spoken encouragement, the words fading into a quiet, persistent hum beneath the stifled staccato of his own sounds hushed behind the teeth buried in his lip, far too aware of the echo off the marble, leery that they might carry further than the locked door. Maybe no one would care but he doesn’t have the wherewithal to think about that now, not with the way his stomach feels so tight, muscles clenching, fingers digging for purchase in the even lines of grout between tiles on the floor.

 _So close, so fucking close -_ he reaches out to touch himself, a blistering moment of both arousal and despair when Vigo reaches out to guide his hand away, trapping it gently under his palm. Taliesin doesn’t have time to beg - and he will, he knows that well enough - before Vigo catches his straining cock in his mouth and takes him deep.

It all comes apart after that. He remembers bucking his hips, thrusting himself up into Vigo’s accepting mouth, a helpless garbled whimper in his throat as he comes and comes and comes, raw, wild pleasure echoing through his core like moans off of marble walls.

He doesn’t come back to himself all at once but when he does he feels like a cloth roughly wrung, wrecked and ruined, though there was nothing done to him in all of that to cause a single second of pain. Vigo is there, still as naked a Taliesin is, curled attentively at his side. He can feel fingers in his hair smoothing its wild, damp curl back from his face, and when he opens his eyes the smile that meets them is gentle. Satisfied, despite the press of a still-hard cock against the outside of Taliesin’s thigh, but not even a touch smug. He almost doesn’t know what he’s looking at until he starts to move, to untangle his body from its myriad of knots, and Vigo slides one arm beneath him to pillow his head, lips pressed against his brow.

“You didn’t need that book at all.” He sounds accusing and he doesn’t know why, but the gloatless smile reappears.

“I think if you’ll consult page thirty-three-”

“Oh bullshit,” Taliesin grouses, finding it impossible not to smile back in the face of bright green eyes so permissively mischievous. “No way you just learned that. It was too good, I don’t believe it.”

“You enjoyed yourself then?”

Taliesin lifts his head from Vigo’s arm to look down at himself, at the bath water and sweat beaded on his chest, his flushed and softening cock where it lies against his belly, the shining fingerprints in stray streaks of oil across his thigh.

“If it’s compliments you want, say so and I’ll give you twenty.”

Vigo laughs at that, as he’s meant to, and leans down to kiss his lips. “Flattery is not required. I prefer your words when you think less of the shape of them. It is enough that you allowed it.”

“That doesn’t make you less beautiful.” It’s honest, but he still isn’t sure why he says it.

Vigo looks as if there’s something he’d like to say in return, perhaps a compliment in kind, but it seems as though he suspects just how little that kind of praise means. How it’s just a body, a thing, nearly nothing of himself.

He smiles a thank you instead. “Would you come home with me? To stay for the night.”

“Truly?”

“Only if you wish to. But I would like it.”

“Won’t I be in your way?”

Vigo stands, slipping back into the pool, and it compels Taliesin to sit up and join him, feeling oddly exposed. Vigo submerges and resurfaces, far too close to Taliesin and the uncertainty he can feel pulling at his expression. He forces a smile but the crease between his brows remains. How he must look, maskless and forever unsure. It’s humiliating, but that at least is a state of being he is familiar with. He swallows it like the last bite of a meal he didn’t want in the first place and looks away. Vigo’s warm, wet hands come up to frame his face, but he doesn’t force him to meet his eyes.

“I was being sincere when I said that you are welcome to as much of my time as you like, I have it to spare. In truth, I would be glad of the company. But nothing need happen that you don’t wish to happen, Taliesin. Never without your permission.”

He won’t ruin the afternoon by bursting into tears. He won’t, but he could. The urge is there and his eyes feel hot and dry, parched, cracked ground waiting for a flood.

He reaches for Vigo instead, leans against his tall, broad body, his face hidden in the crook of his neck where he need no longer avert his gaze. It makes it easier to breathe, to school his expression, to still his heart until it ceases pounding in his ears. Easier to pretend, too, not to notice how slowly Vigo’s arms come around him, how gently he is held, as though he is glass and a touch too sudden will turn him back to sand.

Gods, he is _so_ much better than this. Or at least he should be.

They stay a while longer, until his fingers prune and he’s skirting tipsy on the last of the wine. The alcohol grants him a pleasant distance from his thoughts, enough that he can laugh at himself struggling to don his clothes with skin still damp in the humid steam. Vigo seems interested in his armor, fingers playing over the metal buckles and leather joins, so much so that he doesn’t bother to activate its glamour and make it look like common clothing.

That does of course mean that he’s fully armored in a relaxing bathhouse, armed with two ugly swords and a handful of magic beans, but he’s grown used to their weight and he receives no admonitions.

Vigo’s home is a strange mix of luxury and practicality. It’s sparse, undecorated, utilitarian, but every item in place is well made. What a man like this needs such a sturdy bed for if he’s not going to _use_ it for anything, Taliesin doesn’t know. It seems a pity to waste it though. He takes off the harder bits of his gear and falls onto his back over its foot into soft pillows and sheets that smell of herbs, sighing up at the beams in the ceiling.

Vigo laughs under his breath like Taliesin has just done something endearing and adorable, and really it would be quite awful except for the way he suddenly feels so tired, like he could close his eyes and let the world just stop.

Ridiculous. He hasn’t even taken off his boots, and anyway, he doesn’t live here. He isn’t sure he would know how to, surrounded by so much evidence of _work_ , care taken and effort put in. He’s never been one to make things, habitually impermanent, and he isn’t certain he could if he tried. The only place he ever attempted to build something for himself was - well it doesn’t bear thinking about. Letting his mind slip to thoughts of Cort seems traitorous and disrespectful, as if he’s being both inconstant and rude. That seems too much to puzzle out, all the pieces moving as soon as he thinks he has one set into place, and so he stops and lets his bones hang in his skin like a marionette on strings.

He doesn’t belong to anyone. There’s no one he can betray.

“Are you hungry?” Vigo murmurs in his ear, again close at hand, a pause for his answer and the gentle brush of lips against his neck. Alarming how quickly that kind of softness can sway him, how he bends toward it like a shadowed vine seeking the sun.

Taliesin shakes his head and Vigo kisses him again, tracing the fraying neckline of his shirt. “More tea then.”

He wakes some time later, bleary and unfocused in the half-dark. He doesn’t immediately know where he is, but he’s learned not to give himself away, lying still until the initial panic subsides, playing dead against unseen dangers.

Of course there are none. He’s still in Vigo’s bed, still laid out across the end with the fringed corner of some never before seen blanket slung over his thighs. His boots are gone, belt removed along with all the sharp things about his person, left to lie in the spot he’d claimed with the sudden bout of narcolepsy he can’t explain.

Perhaps he doesn’t have to. Vigo looks over at him when he finally stirs, sitting in one of the sturdy chairs at the table. He’s reading, the slim volume of poetry Taliesin had given him in his hands.

“Welcome back.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not at all, my friend.”

It’s exactly what he thought Vigo would say, but he’s chagrined all the same. “I’m not sure what happened.”

“Wine and warm water.” Vigo’s smile is too knowing, too gentle. “It is no crime to be tired.”

He won’t revisit what a waste of time he is again, not when it feels somehow both petulant and combative. Instead he pads across the room on bare feet in just his shirt sleeves and unbelted trousers like for all the world he belongs here in this familiar little house. As if it was not at all uncommon to find one’s lover - are they lovers? - in candlelight and poetry, waiting for one to wake.

(No, this is not his life. Real life is not like this, but the windows are dark, the fire is low, and he can let himself pretend.)

Vigo lowers the book as he approaches, one of his long fingers marking the page. Taliesin would think himself interrupting save for the way Vigo watches him, distantly curious to see what he’ll do next.

Not that he knows; not that he ever does. He doesn’t think of himself as unpredictable so much as directionless, an unmanned vessel come unmoored.

It’s fine; he isn’t alone, he can let someone else try to figure out how to steer the ship for a little while. Vigo’s book has descended even lower, his place on the page forgotten. He seems much more interested in the way Taliesin leans against the edge of the table, a keenness in his expression that takes a moment for Taliesin to translate because he’s rumpled and askew. Vigo’s interest, while characteristically polite and respectful, seems sincere and undeterred by Taliesin’s apparent inability to pose himself to the most provocative advantage. Maybe that is even the root of it; he doesn’t know, but it doesn’t wound him at all to take direction.

When Vigo puts down his book to reach for him instead, he goes, sliding over to stand between outstretched legs. Warm hands take his hips, knead into his waist, blunt-tipped nails pressing into the muscles in his back as he’s drawn down for a kiss. They move slowly, almost lazily, patient and unhurried as though giving him an opportunity to redirect, to pull away, to say no. As if he actually would.

The hands at his waist smooth up his spine, rucking up the fabric of his shirt, and so he takes it off, his cock vain enough at least to be roused by the quiet sound of appreciation Vigo lets slip. Taliesin braces both hands against the table behind him, head falling back, eyes closed to the ceiling as Vigo leans forward in his seat, warm mouth tracing a path from one hip to its twin, working its way along the loosened waistband of his pants. It feels a bit... well, _good_ , he supposes. To be held tightly, to have strong fingers grip him hard, to want more of something he can actually give.

“What do you want?” he murmurs, hands threading through the long, cool strands of Vigo’s hair. It shines almost silver in the dim light.

“To make you feel good.”

“Well mission accomplished,” Taliesin laughs, only to suck in a breath halfway through when Vigo’s hands take his hips and slide him closer, bowing forward in his chair to nuzzle against the outline of Talieisn’s rising cock, never as reticent as the rest of him.

Vigo’s teeth find the loosened laces of his breeches and pull, a quiet murmur of approval dampened by the fabric in his mouth at the way Taliesin’s cock swells. It would be a simple thing to just sit there, eyes closed and thinking of nothing while he just lets it happen, but the sentiment conflicts with the way he feels grateful - for the day, for the indulgence and the effort, ever leery of pleasurable things too one-sided. He reaches to guide Vigo upwards, a finger hooked beneath his pointed chin, drawing his lanky body high in his seat to kiss his lips.

They stay that way for a while, until anxious energy, youthful overenthusiasm, and Vigo’s steadfast dedication to letting him have whatever he wants ends them back in the chair, Taliesin straddled over Vigo’s spread thighs with his arms about his neck. He works his lips from mouth to chin to jaw to shoulder, tugging aside the fabric of Vigo’s plain spun shirt to sweep his tongue over the dip behind a collarbone, to sink teeth softly into the work-hardened muscle between neck and shoulder.

He knows what Vigo likes now, learning a little more every time the lights go down and their clothes come off. His eagerness is always a surprise though, the heady racing thrum of desire Taliesin can feel when his mouth grazes his pulse. It hardly matches the restraint Vigo routinely exercises, patiently waiting to see which way the quixotic wind will blow.

Not that it matters. If Taliesin is a storm then Vigo is a meadow in wait for rain, able to absorb his wild energy. He doesn’t know if the flowers in a field remember the clouds that water them, but he doesn’t think so.

Still, now is not the moment to decide if that disappoints or comforts him. He can feel Vigo hard against him, half undone to bare an expanse of his bronzed, muscled body. With his fair hair, his fine features, his long eyelashes, he looks like the subject of an erotic painting done in classic style. Humble and irresistible and too good to be real.

He feels real enough though, the way he moves when touched, how he bites his lip, swallows hard, breathes out low and long like an everlasting sigh, as if he’s savoring every second. It makes Taliesin, undeserving as he is, feel generous, his mouth descending to lave a flat pink nipple as he presses their bodies together and takes both their cocks in hand.

Vigo is hard, flushed and thrumming, and it summons a reminder that he hasn’t come yet today, too focused on shaking Taliesin’s solemn mood. He feels fever hot in his grasp, a low groan reverberating when Taliesin swipes his thumb over the head of his cock where a fine bead of precum wells, and then over his own, leaving both their flesh wet and glistening.

He could make Vigo come like this if he wanted; long, slow strokes, the slide of their cocks together as Taliesin works his hips. Vigo’s fingers gather hard into the fabric of his pants, holding him in place, color high on his cheeks and chest as his balls draw tight. It seems a shame though, not nearly enough to repay the consideration he’s been shown today, and anyway it’s easy enough to surrender their pacing when Vigo lifts one hand to trace his lips. They part for two long, calloused fingers that thrust languidly over his tongue and pull away damp with the heat of his mouth to travel down his spine, the loosened waistband of his pants pulled aside.

He’s still faintly slick from their antics in the bathhouse before, enough to make the gentle, steady press of Vigo’s fingers inside him tight but painless. He shudders, arching his back as they find purchase inside him, buried to their limits, the soft warmth of a breath brushing over his shoulder as Vigo sighs his approval. As he smiles and kisses his mouth, his throat, calls him beautiful.

He doesn’t feel beautiful; he feels obscene, riding against Vigo’s cock and hand as if on the back of one of his horses, but there’s a strange kind of comfort in that. Easier to be explicit and wanton and tawdry than to try to feel worthy of the almost worshipful way Vigo looks at him, like he’s some raw piece of clay in his hands taking on the shape of something valuable.

“I want you,” Vigo says, and it’s direct and frank and honest, not coy or dissembling in the slightest. Taliesin opens his eyes to find Vigo gazing up at him, eyes deep green and flecked with firelight, as open and accepting as he is almost never able to bring himself to be.

“I would like to make love to you. If you would permit it.”

His fingers slow but don’t withdraw, as though cautious of swaying Taliesin’s answer with pleasure. It’s an unnecessary courtesy, just like asking his permission. Much easier to be turned over the bed or the table and be taken, to let it happen as it happens, not to have to face the sudden awareness in the back of his mind that his choices have consequences, that the responsibility, the burden, is his.

In the end it’s just easier to agree, and he manages to do so in a way that doesn’t have Vigo skidding to a stop to make him articulate one of the twenty thousand reasons he behaves as he does. And it’s not like he doesn’t want this; he does, he almost always does. Sometimes it just takes him a moment to remember that he can’t be unfaithful to someone who probably doesn’t want him in the first place. Someone who isn’t even there.

That is the end of the agency he is willing to exercise in the given moment, letting himself be kissed, caressed, divested of the dregs of his clothing as Vigo assiduously readies them both, as generous as if he is prepared for Taliesin to make no further contributions to this effort. That isn’t true of course. He aims to be a pleasant bedfellow, never too much work; he won’t just sit there. And the rhythm always comes back, the familiar instinctual way his body knows how to move, hands on Vigo’s broad shoulders or braced behind him on the edge of the table as they test the strength of Vigo’s sturdy furniture.

He manages the compliments too, the words spoken elven and sweet against his throat, his mouth, his ear. He forgets to hate them by the middle, and by the end he isn’t thinking of anything at all, sweat-slicked and hazy, cock in the tight, oiled grip of Vigo’s hand worked down between their bodies.

He comes with Vigo’s teeth set against his shoulder, loud and careless in the still night air, emptying himself across his chest and stomach. Heedless of the mess, Vigo pulls him tight against him, leveraging his body once, twice, three times to chase him over the edge.

The climb euphoric, the descent is often harder and tonight is no exception. He doesn’t try to move, just lets himself settle, and Vigo wraps their flushed and sticky bodies together in his long arms as if he knows exactly how Taliesin’s heart aches.

He doesn’t cry though. Eventually his heartbeat calms, his breathing slows, and Vigo softens inside him. At least the uncoupling is funny, both of them laughing at the awkward sucking sounds of suction breaking between their wet skin.

Vigo looks rather less worn than Taliesin feels, crossing the house naked and unselfconscious to open a window and let in the breeze. Chivalrous and companionable as ever, he helps Taliesin clean himself up, their clothing scattered in a surprisingly extensive radius over the cabin’s floor. Sated, tired, quiet, he leans against Vigo’s chest when they make it to the bed, pliant under the fingers that trail the back of his arm and shoulder.

“Are you sure you want me to stay the night?” It isn’t what he means to lead with, or to say at all, but the words slip from his mouth of their own volition. The fingers on his shoulder stutter into stillness.

“Of course. I would not have asked otherwise.” There is nothing accusatory about the words except in his own imagination, but there is clearly more he wants to say. Taliesin waits for it, expecting anything, and accepting the sad-sounding sigh when it comes bearing his name.

“I hope one day you will believe that I will only ever do with you what you bid me to.”

“I know that.”

A mild shift in tone, the closest Vigo has come to annoyance in his hearing. “There is no need to pretend you want what you don’t, though it is your choice to do so.”

“I wasn’t-” he starts automatically, and knows it for a lie before the second syllable passes his lips. “Not the whole time,” he amends, too shamefaced to lift his head when Vigo presses a chaste kiss to his temple. “I wanted to. Wanted you.”

“What made you doubt?”

“I-” He knows, he just can’t say it. Vigo unravels it anyway, untangling it like a sharp shell snarled in a net.

“Was it the words I used to ask you?”

“Maybe,” he hedges, like a coward. They both know he means yes.

“It would have been easier for you if I told you I wanted to fuck you?”

He can say yes to this question that isn’t a question, and so he does, and laughs. It isn’t really funny so much as that it’s the bald, barren truth, and that at least is something.

Eventually he eases back, lifts his eyes to Vigo’s face. “I’m sorry.”

Predictably Vigo shakes his head. “An apology is unnecessary. I am not here to tell you what to do Taliesin, or how to feel.”

“It might be easier if you would,” he remarks dryly.

It makes Vigo chuckle, unoffended, and kiss the top of his head.

“I know.”

*

He stays and Vigo makes love to him again as the sun comes up, wrapped around him as first light creeps in with the breeze through the open windows. It’s a quiet affair, slower and lazier than the first time, and when it’s over Vigo fusses in the kitchen while Taliesin sips tea, making him breakfast.

That’s a kind of love too, he supposes. Not that he thinks Vigo loves him or wants to or even could, it’s just how he is. It’s the language he speaks, that guides his decisions, dictates the kind of care he thinks is needed. What he brings to everything he touches.

It’s not wrong, or unappreciated, it’s just not something that can stay. As good as it is in these little stolen moments, these pockets of time outside the reach of the rest of the world, it is always temporary. All he need do to remember that truth is turn his back on the little rustic cabin tucked in among the herbs and stables and retrace his steps to the street, leaving the night before behind him like a lamp left burning in an empty room.

As tempting as it is to tell himself that he carries that light with him wherever he goes, that isn’t what he really believes.

Making love is an art, just like knowing better.

**Author's Note:**

> At least Taliesin finally found something to do with the volume of human/elven love poetry, and the instructional sex manual about human/elven carnal relations - super callback from the early days in Waterdeep


End file.
